Throughout both the Old and the New Testament are found many incidents of angelic messages coming to those who sought God. These lovely records become understandable to the student of Christian Science when he accepts as true the definition of "angels" in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." There Mrs. Eddy writes on page 581: "Angels. God's thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality."
God's knowledge of man and man's reflection of God constitute the forever-living unity between God and man. Through individual consciousness, through mental recognition and understanding, true acquaintance with God comes to men. Christian Science reveals God to be divine Mind, boundless, limitless, and purely good, knowing nothing less than infinite perfection. By His very nature and action as divine Mind, God imparts His own perfect qualities of spiritual being to His idea, man. Divine Mind maintains His creation through cherishing, perpetuating it in Mind; and the creation, spiritual man and the universe, receives that maintenance through reflecting and expressing God. Therefore, "God's thoughts passing to man," in this divine relationship, are indeed angels of impartation, guiding, supporting, enlightening even the present sense of mortal existence with spiritual power and peace.
Mrs. Eddy uses the word "idea" in two distinct ways. "Idea" is her term for God's creation. God being infinite Mind, His creation is Mind's idea. Man himself is God's idea. Again we find in her writings the word "idea" used in such statements as that on page 307 of "Miscellaneous Writings," "God gives you His spiritual ideas, and in turn, they give you daily supplies." In the latter sense, God's direct impartation of spiritual ideas to the human consciousness is defined, and the individual's receptivity to the inflowing of divine Mind is made clear.
